Other Critters

Mostly we saw penguins and other birds, seals, and whales. But here
were a few other creatures that don't fit into the main categories:

Here's a krill
that was being shown to us by one of our expedition leaders. We were told
that the shrimp-like krill are the main food source for the vast variety
of creatures that we saw around Antarctica -- whales,
seals, and penguins. That these little guys breed hundreds of
feet deep in the ocean, and then take years to grow and mature,
rising up to the surface as they do so, and that a single swarm of
krill could have as many as a billion members! That if you
weighed all of the krill in the world, they would weigh more than all
humankind! It really brought home to me the fine
ecological balance of life in Antarctica... It used to be that
whales and seals ate most of the krill, but as thousands of whales
and seals were killed by humans, it enabled the krill population to
expand, and so we were told that the penguin colonies,
which also feed on krill, are also expanding. Now that conservation
efforts are having some small success in preserving some
of the whales, this will mean that the whales will once again consume
more krill, and so the penguin population may decrease
somewhat as a result. It's all a delicate dance, on a global
scale.

I was told that this jellyfish-looking thing was a chordate that had
a backbone and stuff.

Here's a slug-like creature that someone found at Neko Harbor, and was
asking a guide about. The guide (who was really an expert on whales,
not slimy little slugs) really didn't want anything to do with it, so it
remains as-yet unidentified!